Red
by HarryPotterCat
Summary: "But moving on from him is impossible when I still see it all in my head." - Red, Taylor Swift. Victoire didn't want to fall for Teddy; she can't deny that, but there's something about him that makes it impossible for her to give up on him. Ted/Victoire; implied Ted/Dominique. Used to be a oneshot but I've now extended it. Rose/Scorpius; Lily/Lysander.
1. Red

**Red**

You'd think that I'd have a little more sense than to fall for the one guy I could never have. It wasn't my fault; he was my best friend. It was bound to happen, or at least that was what I maintain whenever my brother confronts me about it. Louis says that I'm stupid. He says that I could have any other boy I wanted and the fact that I fell for the one I couldn't have frankly showed a lack of sense on my part.

I love Louis, I do, and I'm much closer to him than I am to my sister Dominique, even though Louis's four years younger than I am. However, Louis inherited our mother's no nonsense standpoint whereas I instead … well, I'm not sure what I got, but it certainly wasn't my father's Gryffindor-esque daring.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an idiot. I know that I have little chance with Teddy, but loving him just makes me feel so alive. I feel better when I'm in love with him than I did with any other boyfriend I've had and I'm not sure why. It's as though we just fit together in a way that no other two people do; the only flaw being that he doesn't see it at all. I've never asked him how he feels about me; I thought it wiser to just love him from his side as a best friend without potentially ruining our friendship. Plus, I think if I asked him how he felt and he said he didn't feel the same as I did then I'd just die. I'm not entirely sure I could handle it.

Louis says that I should have some nerve for once and ask him out.

I can't, though. Ted's bound to guess that I'm in love with him if I ask him out. If I arrange a Hogsmeade trip with some mutual friends, or something, it wouldn't be as good as it would be when we're on our own; if I ask him out on our own then he might see right through it all.

Things were so much easier when I didn't love him. I wasn't supposed to, either. Originally, we were best friends, which was the way we both wanted it and the way it had been for as long as either of us could remember. Then Harvey came along, Ted's best friend after me, and I thought I was in love. I even went as far as getting Ted to talk to him for me, which is something I never do. I normally have confidence when it comes to boys, but I thought it would work better if Ted talked to him and tried to find out if Harvey liked me. Harvey didn't, to cut a long story short, but recently that's not what's been bothering me. You see, out of nowhere – and I mean this literally, because I'm not sure myself how it happened – I fell for Ted. I don't know why and I don't know how, but it's driving me insane and nothing Louis or my friends say can make any difference.

I'm sure he must know. We have a few lessons together, even though we're in different houses. He's a Gryffindor whereas I'm a Ravenclaw, but we see each other sometimes at lunch or the like. Whenever I see him, I'm paranoid that he knows. It's quite strong paranoia, too, the kind that's worry and stress all in one.

Still, I can't help joking with him when he walks back from Quidditch practise, the scarlet of his robes clashing horribly with his hair that's so like fire. I can't help watching him out of the corner of my eye when we're sitting in the Transfiguration courtyard alone together and the autumn cold turns his cheeks pink, as he watches groups of younger students toss burnt orange leaves at each other.

I can't help it, and I know that if he catches me eyeing him up questions will form fast on his lips which I have no answer to, but it's not my fault. I didn't choose to fall in love with him; it just happened. Louis says that that's ridiculous: of course I had a choice; I just chose not to listen to the sensible voice inside my head.

Like he would know. I love Louis, I do, but he just doesn't understand it when I tell him I can't help it. He doesn't get what I mean when I say that loving Ted is like trying to change your mind when you're already flying through the free fall. I can't stop it; I wasn't aware that I was in so deep until it hit me; plus, there's a tiny little part of me that doesn't _want_ to stop.

Why should I give up on one of the few things that have ever made me truly feel alive? It's as pointless as asking Rose Weasley to give up reading. It's addictive – _he's_ addictive – and there is no way I want to lose out on the likelihood of this actually working out. Ted's had girlfriends before; not as many as I have had boyfriends, but still a small number. If he didn't see me as his best friend he could fall in love with me, and I know it. There's a possibility, however small and insignificant that is, of me and him getting together and living happily ever after.

Not to mention the fact that I can't actually give up on him. I'm not sure whether that's because I don't want to or because I physically can't; it's undoubtedly a mixture of both. It's as though I've accidentally memorised his face and no other boy I speak to will ever match up. When I liked Harvey, it was simple. I fantasised about us getting together, but at the end of the day that's all it was – a fantasy. With Ted, though, it's real. It's strong and it fills me up and it drives me completely insane and I can't handle it one bit.

With his red and gold Gryffindor tie – because red's my favourite colour, _don't you know_? – and his ever-changing hair that seems to be so permanently stuck on a vivid shade of scarlet that makes him look like Dominique's older brother – because they get on in a more lively and fun way than I do, _how can I ever compare_? – and the way I toss the crimson Quaffle at his nose after his Quidditch practise and it misses by near centimetres – becauseI like playing with fire and the rush of him showing emotion at things I do just _completes me_ – he's made for me, and he doesn't realise it.

Of course, I do realise that chances are in the favour of this all being pointless; I'm not that stupid, no matter what Louis says. I do understand that there's a strong likelihood of us never getting together or working out and me being stuck at his side as I watch him grow and fawn over more beautiful girls than me; still, it's so easy to be in love with him. It's so absolutely simple, and I expect that's what I, as a Ravenclaw, am drawn into: the simplicity of falling for the one guy that's been there all along. Realising that all I've ever wanted has been there since the start, and I never stopped to consider it until I was thrown heels over head into the passion and brightness of love.

So I throw myself even further into it because who's there to stop me? And I laugh with him, and I stare at him harder than ever, hoping that somehow I could programme his brain or read his thoughts and find out how he really feels, and I pick a fight with him because I want him to feel _something_ other than friendship towards me.

And he yells as I do just that, and his hair turns blood red and he asks why you would even think such a thing, of _course_ he doesn't fancy your sister (which I know, of course, but would that stop me?) and I scream at him and unleash everything I feel without telling him so – I turn the loving passion into fury, and the rush of blind red anger sparks through me as he throws his head back laughing and starts to hate me for what I'm doing.

Before I know it, Dominique and Louis are at my side; Dom's face screwed up in confusion as she judges what's going on and chooses _him_; stands beside him and maintains furiously that they'd never happen. I know that; everyone knows that. Louis doesn't even say anything; he just stands there with his Hufflepuff innocence, his bright eyes weighing up what I'm trying to do and before he can even understand I'm pushing past my siblings and grabbing Ted by his tie and staring into his olive eyes – and he looks at me, calmly, trying to stare past my act into what my motives really are, but he can't tell. I've learned to keep how I feel about him hidden, buried, and it makes me hate myself when I realise that he'll never figure it out. He's just assuming that I'm arguing with him because I'm protective over Dom and nothing he can say will ever make any difference. So he pushes me off and storms away, Dom giving me a look of contempt before doing the same; Louis slipping his young hand into mine and squeezing it tight until my skin around his fingers turns pink. I look at him and the fight and the rush of passion leaves me as his baby blue eyes, finally, understand.


	2. Blue

**Blue**

Rosie hates everything for the first time, and now she's starting to hate you.

He's gone and she can't stand it. How can she ever live without him? How can she ever _be_ without him? They were everything when they were together; now, they're broken like glass and she'll never be fixed.

Her cousins tell her she's out of it. Depressed, beautiful Victoire who can have _any guy she wants _but had the nerve to fall for the _one she can't have_; fiery, fearless Lily who simply _doesn't understand_ that anyone could _need someone else the way that she doesn't_; stupid, smart Dominique who's now _slutting it up with her sister's true love_ … you all tell her she needs to fix her attitude because _obviously_ her grades are more important and _obviously_ she needs to put her friends first, instead of her own problems, and _obviously_ he was so god dammed perfect and she's got nothing to go on without him.

Well, you don't say the last part but that doesn't stop _her_ from thinking it. After all, it was _her_ Ravenclaw attitude that tore them apart in the first place; it was _her_ blue eyes and not theirs that cried over him; it was _always her and he never knew it_.

She goes round in circles because she can't make sense of it – she's clever and knows everything and she _doesn't know one bloody thing about this_, about how to pick yourself back up again when the one stable thing in your life _shatters into a million pieces._

He doesn't care. She knows that much: just because he turned her insane doesn't mean she's completely idiotic. He wears his navy jeans with his hands in his pockets _as though it doesn't drive her crazy._

He knows it does, because he knows her – you'd think he would, after all, since they'd been together for Merlin knows how long – and he knows full well that she tears herself up every night wanting to make everything perfect again but _because she can't_, because she _fails for the first time in her life_, she can't manage and she hates it – oh, how she hates it.

Suddenly, everything in her life is blue, and she notices it more than anything. She notices _you_ more than anything, even though this is the one time she has to look after herself and you all ruin that for her, too.

Victoire's silent without Ted; Dominique's silent _with_ Ted. Louis's silent about it _all _because he _understands too much now and he can't handle it_. Lily still wears the necklace her ex-best friend gave her because _she loves the colour blue_ and it seems like she also likes to torture innocent people with the colour, because Rose never asked for this. Does she want to be reminded of the colour of sadness any time that she's thinking things will look up? Does she, _hell_.

She can't run from it, either, and she doesn't know why she'd want to. _It's just a colour, Rosie_, says James, but he's a freaking Gryffindor and she's a Ravenclaw so it's _splattered all over her uniform, for Christ's sake. _They can all escape from her pain but she can't because it's so deep.

She finds sadness everywhere, now, thanks to _him_. It's reflected in the way she cries for Victoire, she cries for Dominique's selfishness, she cries for your audacity to ignore her heartbreak, she cries for your _stupidity to carry on with life as though one of its most crucial members hasn't been broken beyond repair_.

Mummy, look, your smart little girl isn't so smart anymore. Daddy, you thought your only daughter would make you proud and now she can't even handle herself, let alone her Quidditch team! Pathetic, isn't it? _Little Hugo,_ you're gorgeous and funny and even _you_ can't fix your sister's mess.

It's such an acutely traumatic thing to go through for anyone so _why can they, and not her, fix themselves_?

He always won, didn't he, Rosie? She was never _good enough_ for him; her straight 'O' grades were never _outstanding_ at all; she begged and pleaded and wailed at herself for wanting it to be okay! She wants it to be okay _now_! It hurts and you can't help at all, you can't go back in time and change his mind and make things all right and make her _happy_ and if it's not okay _now, will it ever be okay?_

You know, it really does suck to feel this way. There's no other way to phrase it, really, and she knows it. She, with a vocabulary to rival even the best-spoken Professor, can't think of a way to phrase how she feels without resorting to the language that all of _you_ use.

Oh, how she hates it. She paints her nails _blue_ to keep that _one bit of him alive_. Someone notices, but she doesn't know who because she's _so out of it_. You could have noticed, but you didn't. She wears her Christmas jumper _everywhere_, and you all think it's because she's a Ravenclaw so she's automatically _programmed_ to dress like she belongs in the _sky_. She'd belong anywhere but here, and you all think it. She's so smart and perfect and so _irrevocably broken _that where she is now is no place for her.

Where she is now, without him, will never be a place for her.


	3. Dark Grey

**Dark Grey**

It's funny, because I don't even care about any of this. Truthfully, I don't give a damn about Rose and Vicky's petty boy dramas because, honestly, who does?

It sounds mean but I really don't care. It's the truth and, as it transpires, the truth is the one thing that not one member of my family can actually handle. Please, we all knew that Scorpius was going to break Rose's heart ever since he became the one boy to capture it. Like we didn't all realise that Victoire was in love with Teddy and that it wouldn't work at all, because their friendship would never survive it.

See, people really do overestimate supposed Ravenclaw intelligence. It turns out that I'm smarter than all of them put together, considering that I can see things that they can't now. Of course, there is the downside that I can't feel anything anymore, but we'll let that slide for now.

That was all Lysander's fault.

Whatever. I'm not going to miss him because I'm barely here at all and I like it better this way. I don't want to try to be everything he wants me to be because he was just a boy, and everyone knows that boys don't matter.

Fake smiles and composed facial expressions so that they don't all see that I'm deadpan about their lives. Pretend to care and act as though you're alive when really, you know, I crossed that bridge a long time ago.

Some people suggest that I've changed since Lysander. It's always phrased as though it was such a big event … there was 'before Lysander' and 'during Lysander' and, as always, 'after Lysander'.

And that's where I am now, and I despise the way that people feel the need to point it out. Just because I'm not crying all the time like Rose or withdrawn like Victoire doesn't mean I don't hurt inside.

Well, that's not strictly true: I haven't hurt in a year, and I quite like it. Feeling nothing is a lot better than feeling everything all at once. True, I expect it'll all explode out of me at some point in the near future, but until then we can all rest safely in our beds knowing that fearless little Lily doesn't give a damn about anything.

Why should I, anyway? You don't interest me. There is not one thing that I have heard about everyone's lives recently that's caught my attention. It's all just so meaningless and unworthy of my focus that I've learnt to keep my ears shut and my mouth open, so that people mistake my 'mm's and 'ahhh's for actual recognition of what they're saying.

Like I said, I seem to be the only smart one around here.

Everything's perfect this way.

No, cracks in the surface are not beginning to show. No, I did not tear into a first-year for playing a record that used to be Lysander's favourite. No, I did not fuck Lorcan because he looks like his twin brother. No, I do not rely on James and Al any more than a perfectly capable sister needs to.

Don't listen to rumours, because we all know that they're not true. It really makes me sick that everyone groups me in with my cousins. Just because Dominique's sleeping with Teddy doesn't mean that I use physical intimacy as a way of getting over my problems. Just because Hugh can't help Rose doesn't at all imply that I conversely need my brothers to get me through. Just because Louis is avoiding anything that accidentally reminds his oldest sister of Teddy doesn't mean that I am, too.

Everyone's so incapable of managing their problems, and then there's me.

It only hurt a bit, you know. Everyone acts as though it's the worst thing to go through, but it's not. Not really. Everyone acts as though it should hurt a whole lot more; everyone's fucking pushing me to need him and I hate it.

I hate how I need him.

I don't, though. It's so easy not to need him, and I forget that I ever did, so much so that things seem a whole lot better than they are. I don't care. I never really cared; deep down, I think I always knew I was going to end up not giving a damn. It just took someone like Lysander to tip me off the edge and turn me into the cold-hearted bitch that I am now.

What amuses me most is the way that people recoil every time I use harsh language like that. Pretty princess Vicky can't handle the word 'bitch' (maybe it reminds her too much of her sister); sweet little Rosie despises the word 'fuck' (just because she didn't get round to fucking her boyfriend doesn't mean nobody else did with theirs); everyone stares and whispers and points when you use bad language and I don't care.

They're only words. Words can't hurt you; words can't break you beyond repair unless you're weak, like Rose. Words can't destroy your friendships unless you're stupid about using them, like Victoire. Words can't turn someone inside out unless you never really cared in the first place, like Lysander.

How petty it all is.

I remember when I did care. I remember when fearless Lily cared about everyone, and was the nicest person imaginable, and now she doesn't care and it's so funny to her, watching you all suffer and break yourselves when she's found a better way of dealing with it all. If you keep it all inside and never let the truth show, it's a whole lot easier than feeling things.

Yes, I do know that Lysander watches me sometimes. Yes, I know that James says Lysander needs me as much as I need him (because obviously my oldest brother would know what I need); yes, I know that Dominique desperately wants to be my friend (why? Is it because I'm now stone-cold and unbreakable, or is it because I'm acting like a heartless bitch, like her?); yes, I know that Hugh hates how I've changed since Lysander ended things.

Do something about it, Hugo. Instead of you all talking about me behind my back, do something about how I feel. Or how I don't feel, depending on how you'd like to look at it.

Either way, whatever you do, it won't change anything. Lysander won't go back on his decision; I won't stop deserving what happened.

I think I do deserve it. I need pain to make me feel alive, though I have no way of getting it, so I push people away because emotional pain is just as good. Emotional pain just teaches me to store it all up and not let it affect me.

The slightly ironic thing is that only Lysander would know what I'm doing. Only Lysander would fully understand that I'm closing myself up in order to make myself a better person.

Yes, I can be a better person without him; it is possible. No, he did not make me complete. No, he was not everything I had to live for. No, he did not make me whole and I am not hurting without him and I am fine and this is just me I haven't changed and no I know you hate it I hate it too and I can't deal with it anymore and I need you Lysander I really need you but it's his fault isn't it isn't it isn't it?

I want all of it to just disappear.

I can't stop disappointing people with my attitude. Once someone catches on to what I'm doing they think it's the right thing to do: since they can't handle their stupid lives themselves, they assume I can, so they copy me. I suppose that's the downside to having a famous family, but if people choose to follow me then it's their fault; it's funny watching them struggle, because nobody can do it as well as me. Nobody else has the right amount of dignity to close themselves up so tightly that no one can get in; nobody else has the perseverance to do it like I can. They then blame me, because of course it's my fault that they're not fucking good enough. Since I'm empty, why not blame me for everything? At least _she_ won't feel it, they think, and I expect they're right.

If this wasn't all so entertaining to me, I'd be annoyed by it all. In fact, I suppose I am.

It really gets to me when people say that I should have moved on, like it's my fault that Lysander decided to pull the plug on our relationship. It also pisses me off when I hear things from boys Lysander knows, saying rubbish like 'I can't date you because it won't be fair on him'. _He_ doesn't have a say in anything! Don't I matter?

Stop, Lily. Hush it all up. You're feeling something, and that's bad, remember?

I hate Lysander for this. Blame him, because it's harder to admit that I need support. Blame him, because really it was his fault that I've changed. Blame him, because even though I need him, I _don't need him at all_ and he's responsible for that.

It all comes back to him and I'm sick of it.

I just want it all to stop.

And, suddenly, it does stop. Suddenly, Victoire stiffens her resolve like I did and walks straight past Teddy and Dominique with her head held high and her face red with fury. Suddenly, Rose stops moping around and wipes her bright blue eyes and leads her Quidditch team to victory. Suddenly, I see colour again. I don't know why; don't ask me why, because I couldn't tell you.

Lorcan's eyes, which are so like his brother's, are silver instead of a dull grey; Hugo's dark hair looks auburn in the sunlight (because I notice the sunlight, now); Roxanne's skin is coffee-coloured and James's hazel eyes have flecks of gold in them and Lucy flicks her green eyeliner out at the sides just to prove she's a Slytherin and can also follow trends.

Little Lily's noticing things, now.

I'm scared to say I'm feeling things. I'm terrified to consider the fact that my walls are tumbling and what that might mean. It means I have to live again, and I was much safer being empty. Maybe that's where I went wrong.

Heartbeat speeds up when I see Lorcan and stops completely when I see Lysander. Feel lighter when I'm around Hugo and feel heavier when I'm with Dominique. More comforted sitting with James than walking with Albus. Laugh when Fred jokes and groan when Lucy does uncanny impressions.

Claim back the friends lost. Repair the bridges that Lysander burnt. Knock down the boundaries that turn others away.

Start to feel.


End file.
